Russia 2-0 Sweden

Mother Russia! How I love thee. Seriously though, I love Russia. I love their language, their national anthem, their music, and I’m coming to love the way they play football. In fact I can sing their national anthem. I don’t know any of the words but I can “da da da” along like a good ‘un. Although given that the Russian word for “yes” is “da”, it’s entirely possible that someone could hear me and think I really love the national anthem. I mean really love it. Like, When Harry Met Sally love it.

None of the above is inspired by my love of Red Alert 2 and the many hours of university time wasted conquering the world with the Soviets (eat flaming death, Allied scum!).

Once again I’m filled with this tremendous sense of achievement in having found another marvellous place in London that I would likely never have encountered were I not attempting this Europub mission. Potemkin in Farringdon is excellent!

Aside from recalling images of Battleship Potemkin, the Odessa steps and Sergei Eisenstein, it is a genuinely marvellous little place. Spit n’ sawdust it most definitely is not; in fact it’s rather swanky albeit with reasonable prices. The bar area isn’t massive but there’s a restaurant downstairs that I will definitely be sampling at some point. The menu looked enticing – if only I hadn’t eaten re-heated pasta bake just an hour earlier…

The lager weren’t bad either – Baltika #3 at £3.15 a pint, very refreshing taste. A small part of me dies every time I pay more than £2.50 for a pint of beer but this really was good stuff. In fact my only regret was that I didn’t sample the (extensive) vodka menu. The menus themselves come with “vodka etiquette” instructions at the back, including a nice section on the traditional way to drink vodka with food. Yum yum.

There wasn’t too many people in watching the football though, in truth. As my mate commented, Potemkin is an excellent place to take a lass on a date, so it’s less of a “football pub” but this was enjoyable all the same. The only annoying thing was the pair of English twats who insisted on haranguing this poor girl for pretty much the whole night.

We think she was a reporter of some kind – overhearing their conversation, it sounded like she was attempting something similar to what I am here, but presumably for an actual publication. Anyway, this pair of tosspots were banging on all bloody night. Horrendously, one of them was a Yorkshireman. Talk about letting the side down. Clearly not a self-respecting Yorkshireman. Possibly he was from Leeds. Booooooo!

“He MOW-tee-vaytes ‘em!” Apparently this is why Guus Hiddink is successful.

We gathered that the reporter was Korean, hence the bloke’s continual reiteration as to Hiddink’s qualities. Amusingly, he’d opened the exchange with:

“Russia, right, they’re rubbish.”
Everyone in the bar, Russian or no, looked round.
“Hiddink, right, is brilliant.”
Fair doos.

How does he achieve such amazing success? “He motivates ‘em!”

Awesome. Tosser. He must have said that 20 times while we were there. And that was just the bits we heard. We were trying desperately to ignore him.

Right, enough about the English twats. Russia were really, really good in this game. I do like the Russkies – I tipped them to go pretty far in this tourney, not, like, the final or anything, but pretty far as in semi-finals. They play excellent football and what a difference the return of Arshavin makes.

They’re quick all over the pitch; in the mind as much as on the ground. The ball moves like a pinball, but with control. Every touch is designed to open up options; to face the goal or make a passing angle. And in this game, unlike against Greece, they made the right decisions rather than over-complicating and scored two very nice goals.

To a man, they’re footballers, in short, and in all honesty I’m left wondering just how it took an English loss to Croatia to sneak them through to the finals in the first place. Playing like this, they look a match for most teams – and I mean that sincerely. They now play Holland in the quarters and whilst I expect Holland to win, it should be a hell of a game. Both teams attack so beautifully.

Andrei Arshavin – I’ve heard a lot about this chap but only seen him a few times. He really does look a tidy player – expect to read his name linked with all and sundry in the papers over the coming weeks. But it’s Pavlyuchenko that really interests me.

This fella could do well. He’s already bagged two goals in this tournament, to go with another two he scored against England in Moscow. I like him a lot; he reminds me a little bit of Wayne Rooney – slightly taller, less strong and more selfish, but there are definite elements of the Roon about his play. For starters, I feel like something’s going to happen when he gets the ball into feet. His movement is good. He likes to turn and face the goal and get at defenders. He’s the kind of guy that gets the crowd on the edge of their seats when he gets hold of the ball.

He’s still quite raw, and there were definite technical deficiencies about his finishing tonight – he could have had three or four goals comfortably, as against Greece. It’s that lack of clinical finishing that will probably be the difference between him being a good player (a Jermain Defoe) and a great player (a Shevchenko – pre-Chelsea), but there’s a spark there. If I was a football coach, I think I’d look at him with some excitement and think “here’s something I can work with and turn into a star”. Whatever. We’ll have him down Bramall Lane any day.

And so the quarterfinals are set up intriguingly. Spain v Italy is the eye-catching one I think – I can see the Italians having a bit of a sneaky run now, even without the suspended Gattuso and (more importantly) Pirlo. I guess the biggie is Portugal v Germany tonight – who to support! I’m still undecided – it could be time for Bavarian Beerhouse debut, or a couple of the Portuguese places I’ve picked out, or outright neutrality in a standard pub.

One thing’s for sure; the tournament is reaching a head now, and as the games become more spaced (particularly next week), come hell or high water I’ll be seeing all of them out in Europubs. The beauty of this mission is that it’s contained within 3 weeks, which means I can continue to turn out a load of bumpf on here with some regularity and not bore myself out of it. But as a result, it’s imperative that I make the most of it. After all, Euros only come round every four years…

Спасибо. Go to Potemkin. Listen to Dominion/Mother Russia by the Sisters of Mercy.